Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure, for example, relates to wireless communication systems, and more particularly to techniques for managing clock drift when communications involve multiple active coexisting radio access technologies.
Description of Related Art
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power).
A wireless communications network may include a number of network devices, e.g., an access point (AP), that can support communication for a number of wireless communication devices. A wireless device may communicate with a network device bi-directionally. For example, in a wireless local area network (WLAN), such as a Wi-Fi network (IEEE 802.11), a station (STA) may communicate with an associated AP via downlink and uplink channels. From the perspective of a STA, the downlink channel (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the AP to the station, and the uplink channel (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the station to the AP. The AP may be coupled to a network, such as the Internet, and enable a STA (e.g., mobile device) to communicate via the network (and/or communicate with other devices coupled to the access point).
In some cases, a wireless communication device may have multiple coexisting radios for different radio access technologies (RATs). For example, a wireless communication device may use one radio to send and receive WLAN communications and another radio to send and receive Bluetooth (BT) communications. The device may manage its communications over the different RATs, for example, so that WLAN communications are not attempted while BT communications are active. Thus, there may be a scheduled interference interval (e.g., for BT) for a STA during which an AP should not attempt WLAN communications with the STA.
Each radio (the coexisting radios of the STA (e.g., WLAN and Long Term Evolution (LTE) or BT) and the radio of the AP (WLAN)) has its own clock for the timing of transmissions and receptions. Clock drift between these different clocks may lead to an inaccurate estimation by the AP of the actual schedule of the interference interval at the STA. This may result in collisions of AP transmissions to the STA with transmissions/receptions at the STA over the different RAT or to underutilized medium time.